This system utilizes semantic knowledge modeling to facilitate the management and translation of information across multiple languages, locales, and presentational forms.
As companies are becoming increasingly more international in business activities, each country in which a company operates may have different languages. The diversity of these cultures produces a challenge for information systems. Each culture wants the software and data it produces to support the local conventions and cultures. This means that software must be translated for each of these cultures. The cultures can differ in terms of script (written languages used), languages, meaning of pictures and images, currency conventions, address and telephone number conventions, data and time conventions, units of measures commonly used, and many other aspects of the information system.
Typically, the term globalization is used to refer to the process of enabling software to support multiple languages. Globalization involves removing all cultural biased conventions from the software so that the software can more quickly be adapted to the conventions and language of a particular culture. The term localization is used to refer to the process of providing a particular cultural binding of the software. The localization process involves translating the strings, images, and other elements of the system to a form that matches the local conventions of a particular culture.
Further, the cost of translating systems and information can be quite expensive. This cost is particularly high if the information system changes frequently. Each change must be made through all the locales. If a system can not manage the effects of change efficiently, increased costs are the result as unneeded translations are required.
Today, most globalization systems are limited in that their operation is restricted to the resource (e.g., strings, bit maps, etc.), where each resource in the system is placed in a resource file and then translated or localized. These systems are further restricted to loading no more than one resource file at a time, consequently, they are unable to support no more than a single locale at any particular moment in time.
Today""s global environment often necessitates that users have access to multiple translations (i.e. locales/locale context) For example within Switzerland, multiple languages are used and they should be able to view information in the language/dialect with which they are most comfortable.
The instant inventive system utilizes a hierarchical knowledge representation in order to more efficiently support the translation and management of multiple localities. Utilizing this type of knowledge representation provides several key advantages. The first is a greater ability to differentiate semantically different symbols within the system. The second, is the ability to reutilize the translation of these symbols once translated a single time; and concurrent locale support.
It has become common place in computers to separate the presentation resources from the actual program. The XPG4 standards, as well as operating system standards within Windows, OS/2 and UNIX provide facilities for separation. However, these separations are generally string tables and id translation. The instant systems deal with the separation of strings, any resources, images, sound strings, from source code in the system. They do not utilize a semantic knowledge representation in order to manage resources in a more efficient and meaningful way within the translation process.
The instant system provides several advantages over other systems. First, the system manages information based on semantics not string translation. This allows information to be modeled utilizing object oriented and semantic knowledge engineering techniques. These techniques can reduce the total number of strings within the system. Further, the strings to be translated have cleaner correspondence to the conceptual units of translation rather than dictionary lookups of words.